Oswald John Nira, a Ph.D. student in the School of Theology and Religious Studies, was named a doctoral fellow by the Fund for Theological Education Inc., on May 12. FTE scholarships are given to enhance diversity in theological education. The fellowship provides Nira, who is Mexican-American, with a $5,000 scholarship. He is currently working with Rev. John Ford, professor, collecting oral histories of lay Mexican-American leaders in the Diocese of Austin, Texas.

On the Road

Bruno Damiani, professor of Spanish, gave a July 23 lecture titled “Poetry of Quevedo and Góngora” and chaired a July 24 session on Renaissance and Golden Age literature at the 15th international congress of the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas in Monterrey, Mexico.

Jean-Michel Heimonet, professor of French, gave a presentation about his book La Démocratie en Mal d’Altérité at a program titled “Université Permanente” that was part of a July 3 seminar at the University of Nantes in France.

Kassen also led a session with K-12 foreign-language teachers at an Oct. 29 diocesan education institute titled “The Year of Languages and You,” organized by the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Va. The event was part of a national initiative acclaiming 2005 as the “Year of Languages.”

May also presented “The Role of Lipids in the Operation of Voltage-Dependent Ion Channels in Nerve Cells” at the Weekly Science Seminar hosted Oct. 14 in Baltimore by Morgan State University’s School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

Virgil Nemoianu, William J. Byron Distinguished Professor of Literature and professor of philosophy, offered a paper on “Leibniz, Vico and Alternative Modernities” at an August conference titled “Globalism and Localism” in Plymouth, Mich.

Nemoianu also presented an invited featured lecture, titled “The Contexts of Kafka: Dystopia, Phantasy, Multiculturalism,” at a September conference on Kafka and world literature at the University of Saarbrucken, Germany.

Michael Noone, professor of law, was a member of the panel on “Military Commissions and the Constitution: Then and Now” at a Sept. 30 Washington, D.C., program titled “The Supreme Court of the 1940s and Military Justice,” presented by the Lecture Program of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Claes G. Ryn, professor of politics, presented a paper titled “Which American?” on America’s political and cultural polarizations during an April 2 panel on U.S. foreign policy. The panel took place at the meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Chicago. Ryn’s paper was picked up by several Web sites.

Ryn gave an invited lecture titled “Irving Babbitt and the American Political Tradition” at Georgetown University on May 3.

He gave a May 17 speech on ideological universalism in U.S. foreign policy to the Senate of the Czech Republic in Prague.

He chaired a panel titled “The Humanitarian Imagination in the Progressive Era” at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago on Sept. 4.

He gave an invited lecture titled “Neo-Jacobin Imperialism or Responsible Nationhood?” at the Cornell University Law School on Sept. 23.

Publications

Professor Nemoianu wrote a review article titled “Chateaubriand: the Absent Center of Romanticism” that appeared in the October 2004 edition of European Journal of Political Theory.